Debate Re-cap: Rick Perry Would Like to Combine Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain into One Caingrich

Last night, two presidential contenders and seven children sticking their heads through amusement-park-style wooden cutouts of politicians competed in the Fox News–Google Republican primary debate. In contrast to most previous debates, not only was former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson invited to the proceedings, but he also received a plus-one for his hairpiece. All kidding aside, Johnson was terrific in Waiting for Guffman.

Michele Bachmann, wearing Britney Spears’s red turtleneck from the “Oops I Did It Again” video and a ribbon pin the size of Newt Gingrich, was more visible than she was at the CNN–Tea Party Express debate of September 12. Still, she had but one contribution to today’s news cycle: when asked about her earlier claim that the H.P.V. vaccine causes mental retardation despite the fact that this is objectively false, she explained that she was only repeating something an upset mother once said to her. In other words, Bachmann will repeat anything said to her, verbatim, without so much as a passing curiosity as to whether it’s true.

Moving on to Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, the aforementioned “two presidential contenders” in our lede. Romney was personable, commanding, presidential, and kind of hunky. (Ew! We don’t know. Ahh.) Perry was way off his game, seeming particularly adrift in the foreign policy and Social Security arenas. Asked what he would do if awoken in the middle of the night to learn that the Taliban had hijacked Pakistan’s nukes, Perry said that mostly what we should do is make India feel like our friend. Maggie Haberman at Politico reported that he “did not seem in command on a topic on which he needs to show some heft.”

Perry was mostly good in his response to Bachmann’s H.P.V. tirade, though, telling a story about a young woman with cervical cancer and asserting that he would always “err on the side of life.” “Life,” of course, is a very popular Republican cri de coeur except in the case of possibly innocent death-row inmates.

Nearly every time Perry tried to poke Romney, the former Massachusetts governor would laugh condescendingly and say, “Nice try.” It was more effective than it sounds.

The debate, as we previously mentioned, was sponsored by Google, and when candidates’ answers ran over the allotted time, a GChat noise—bing!—loudly sounded to indicate that they were to wrap things up. Moderator Bret Baier asked whether those on stage liked the awful new sound. The response: utter silence. “O.K., I guess they do!” Baier said merrily, incorrectly. Actually, the sound made it very difficult to tell whether those of us watching at home were receiving GChats, say, commending us on a particularly caustic Newt Gingrich pun, or if it was simply the television.

As the debate wrapped up, Baier asked everyone on stage who they would appoint to serve as their vice president—a needlessly cruel question for seven-ninths of the participants. Rick Perry, whose answer mattered, had an interesting answer: Herman Cain—but only if he could “mate him up” with Newt Gingrich. It is a creature called Caingrich, and the only really remarkable thing about it is that it really really likes pizza, instead of just really likes pizza.